Pay Me a Pineapple

Our audience growth editor is getting married. In her honor, this week’s Australia Diary is about how her talented fiancé, Will Cuming (a musician known as LANKS), became haunted by tales of spiky fruit.

Pineapples, Prawns and Lobsters

By Tacey Rychter

When my fiancé was a teenager growing up in the southeastern suburbs of Melbourne, he started taking guitar lessons from a new teacher in Collingwood. At the end of the lesson, he realized he didn’t have any cash on him, but asked, “How much do I owe you for the lesson?”

The guy said, “Just a pineapple, but you can bring it next week.”

So the next week Will came back with an actual pineapple, and said, “Well, here’s your pineapple.”

The guy very politely explained that a “pineapple” is Aussie slang for the yellow $50 note (i.e. a $5 is a “prawn,” a $20 is a “lobster”), and as hilarious as this was, asked if he could please bring the actual money next time.

The best part about this story is, many years later, another muso told the story back to Will (obviously not knowing it was him), about some idiot who tried to pay for his guitar lesson with an actual pineapple.

We wish Will and Tacey a beautiful wedding day and marriage. We’ll be listening to lots of LANKS’s music while she is away.

And don’t forget to send us your story. In fact, we’d love to receive any anecdote, video, illustration, poem or photo — or a combination — about those incidents that would happen only in Australia.